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The seven-strong shortlist that reached the second stage of the Ross Pavilion International Design Competition was selected from the 125 teams (made up of 400 individual firms) who entered the competition. The Pavilion, which will provide a flexible platform for the imaginative arts and cultural programming that Edinburgh excels in, will allow visitors and

Pedro Pitarch of Spain was last year’s winner of the Steedman Fellowship competition, which includes a $50k travel grant. Among largest U.S. architecture awards for young architects, Pitarch’s entry, “This Train is my Bedroom,” deals with the boundary between public and private spaces. According to jury chair, Mason White,

This design competition for the historic core of the Gallaudet campus and adjacent public realm focused on themes of cultural exchange and creative placemaking. It ran from September 2015 to November 2016.

BackgroundEstablished in 1864, Gallaudet University is the world’s only liberal arts university in which all programs and services are designed to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing students. One of the challenges faced by the competitors was the use of “DeafSpace” in their proposals—design principles based on the knowledge that the built environment, largely constructed by and for hearing individuals, presents a variety of challenges to which deaf people have responded with a particular way of altering their surroundings to fit their unique ways-of-being. Examples of DeafSpace design elements can be found on the Gallaudet campus in two of its buildings. This project is the first time these design principles will be incorporated into a public space off the Gallaudet campus.

Throughout the competition, the Gallaudet community participated in a number of design events, including the Shape Gallaudet launch, a colloquium or discussion, and a charrette, also known as a live design critique.

The competition featured two parallel initiatives:

Shape Gallaudet invited ideas, inspirations, sketches, images, and videos from students, staff, alumni, local residents, and supporters of Gallaudet, both international and stateside. The finest of these were used to inform the briefing to be given to the design teams shortlisted after the first stage.

Covit/Nguyen/NORR (Montréal QC) has won the competition commemorating the Lord Stanley Cup. The winner prevailed over 40 original entries in the competition and eight finalists. The other finalists were:

London—10 August, 2016—The Royal College of Art announced today the seven shortlisted architectural practices for its new state-of-the-art £108 million Battersea South campus in an invited design competition.

The Competition encouraged innovative and cost-effective proposals for the re-design and consolidation of Tristan’s government (community infrastructure) buildings. The brief encouraged initiatives to significantly iprove the standard and performance of residential properties, together with improvements to the island’s agrarian systems to better support grazing and the year-round growth of fresh produce.

by James Reston, Jr.Arcade Publishing
New York (2017)
Hardcover, 267 pages
ISBN 9781628728569

View from the memorial to the Washington Monument
Photo: Paul Spreiregen

Having an idea is one thing. Realization of that idea is another. Maybe this should have been the main thrust of a new book on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Instead, the author of this book, whose interest in this topic dates back to his military service during the Vietnam conflict, chose to sensationalize the the cultural and political themes familiar to the project, rather than treat its progress in contrast to the evolution of other recent memorial competitions located on or near the Mall, the political and emotional components of the various memorials notwithstanding. The World War II Memorial and Eisenhower Memorial also were fraught with controversy by the public and in the press, whereby one hardly resembled the original design, and the other has not yet made it beyond the drawing board. Projects on or near the Mall run into similar obstacles in navigating their way through the DC approval process unscathed, regardless of the subject matter.\

After surmounting two formidable obstacles, an open international competition with over 260 entries and a second stage limited to four other finalists—two of which were high-profile invitees*—the young Copenhagen firm of Vargo, Nielsen & Palle was declared the winner of the Aarhus School of Architecture Competition. As is often the case when a competitor from a small firm advances to a final stage, the winner teamed up with ADEPT, which had placed in the top six as an honorable mention in the open stage and Rolvung & Brøndsted Arkitekter, Tri-consult and Steensen Varming.

“We must look beyond current options and activate new and original ideas,” declared Mayor Martin J. Walsh in announcing Boston’s first-ever housing competition. “The Housing Innovation Competition, “ Walsh continued, “ is a chance for Boston to take its place in the forefront of housing innovation.” Announced in 2016, less than a year after the creation of the Mayor’s Housing Innovation Lab, the competition was to address the steep costs of living in The Hub, the lack of affordable housing, and the resultant strains on residents and new arrivals. iLab joined the Department of Neighborhood Development, the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association, and the Boston Society of Architects in soliciting affordable housing schemes for three city-owned lots in the Roxbury section of town.

Parks have become more than leisure destinations. Cities, as clients, have insisted that parks should include more than tennis courts and swimming pools; but they should also stimulate the brain beyond what nature might have in store. Thus, the winners of the 2012 Taichung Gateway Park competition, Catherine Mossbach and Philippe Rahm proposed an ambitious and innovative series of microclimates as the guiding thought behind their Atmospheres of Wellbeing proposal. The microclimates, scattered throughout the linear site, were to be the product of natural and artificial devices.

Until the early 1970s, architecture in Bavaria, and in Munich in particular, was not only viewed as traditional, but even leaving the impression to some as being ‘quaint.’ Then came the 1972 Olympic Games, which marked a watershed moment in design for that community. Not only was a contemporary solution for the site of the games implemented—the roof tensile structures designed by the German architect, Frei Otto was revolutionary—but a new cylindrical BMW Headquarters building arose nearby. Designed by the Austrian architect, Karl Schwarzer, as the result of an invited competition, the building became one of the city’s major landmarks—a prominent tower as arrival feature in a low-rise city.

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